GitOps as an Operating Model: Running Kubernetes at Scale with Helm and CI/CD

GitOps Is Not a Tool - It's a Contract

Most teams adopt GitOps for deployments. Senior teams adopt it for control, auditability, and safety.

GitOps answers hard questions:

Who changed what?
When did it change?
Why did it change?
How do we undo it safely?

Operating Model

Git (Desired State)

|-- Pull Requests (Human Control)

CI / CD (Policy Enforcement)

Kubernetes (Reconciled State)

There is no imperative access to production.

Repository Design (Optimized for Humans)

application-platform/

├── charts/

│ └── api-service/

├── environments/

│ ├── dev.yaml

│ ├── uat.yaml

│ └── prod.yaml

├── policies/

│ └── resource-limits.yaml

└── pipelines/

Key Rule

If it runs in prod, it must exist in Git.

Helm as a Packaging Boundary

apiVersion: apps/v1

kind: Deployment

metadata:

name: {{ .Release.Name }}

spec:

replicas: {{ .Values.replicas }}

strategy:

type: RollingUpdate

Helm is not used for templating convenience - it's used to enforce consistency across teams.

Environment Configuration Is Explicit

# prod.yaml

replicas: 4

resources:

limits:

cpu: "1000m"

memory: "1Gi"

autoscaling:

enabled: true

Production differs by design, not accident.

CI/CD Pipeline as a Policy Engine

deploy:

stage: deploy

script:

- helm lint charts/api-service

- helm upgrade --install api charts/api-service -f environments/prod.yaml

This is where:

Security scans run
Policy checks happen
Rollouts are controlled

Why This Scales Organizationally

Developers ship faster
Platform teams sleep better
Auditors get Git logs
Rollbacks are predictable

Most importantly: production becomes boring again.

Final Thoughts

Terraform defines what exists
Kubernetes defines how it runs
GitOps defines who controls it

A platform succeeds not when it's powerful - but when it's predictable under failure.